Office on Wheels

KIOSK wants a mobile office that functions as a reception area in the exhibition space. Time for an Open Call! During the month of November 2021, KASK students could present their sketches and furniture designs. Maïté Vanpoucke and Femke Florus, third Bachelor students Sculpture, were the first to submit their ideas. The two students were immediately on the same wavelength. They presented several ideas and an enormous desire to start the project. When a third designer, Nine Vandamme, also a third-year sculpture student, joined, the production of the furniture could begin.

Despite their different styles, the designers give each other input throughout the work process, resulting in uncompromising design and a constant search for the best solution for the furniture. The designers work with each other rather than alongside each other and see both the design and production of the furniture as a collaboration. The table design ultimately takes the form of three separate parts, each of the designers making her mark on a part of the whole.

At the start of the project, it was not clear how far the artistic freedom of the students could go. Femke Florus: “I thought it would be more about the execution. I didn’t expect that there would be so much creative freedom to work out the details and design”. The three designers welcomed that freedom with open arms. Femke Florus’ table design will look like a hamburger, the chair will resemble a fish, and Florus will also mold the designs of the cushions for the sofa. The three designers have a feeling for detail. Maïté Vanpoucke works with a few basic colors that she combines in a refined way in strongly developed line patterns. Nine Vandamme also has an eye for detail, although she opts for a great challenge in her practice, namely using concrete as a visible material. “I look for the relief and texture of the surface. I press different materials into the concrete, creating textures and drawings”.

As sculpture students, the three had no experience in designing and making furniture although they were attracted to it. Maïté Vanpoucke: “I find it very interesting to use the pictural surface in a different way. All of a sudden, my sculptures become tables, or lamps,... this is something that excites me”. It looks as if the sculpture students have never done anything else: from day one, they behaved like three self-confident students with a wood saw and sander in their hands. While loudly singing along to musicals, they got the job done in no time. The production hours spent on the furniture could, with the approval of the sculpture teachers, be transferred to the students’ studio hours, which reduced some of the time and workload. The decision to include the project in the studio hours was not unexpected. Their furniture designs are in line with the free work they make as students. They are creating a piece of furniture that fits into their own design language. As mentioned earlier, the table consists of three parts, each part executed in a different design language. The cabinet is made by the three designers together. It remains to be seen whether the designers will succeed in their plan to create a unity in style together. On 22 January, at the opening of the new exhibition, the furniture will be put into use and presented to the public. I am looking forward to the preview. The ingenuity of the designers and their love for craftsmanship are sure to amaze.

Minne De Meyer Engelbeen, student Curatorial Studies at the KASK, co-coordinator of this project.

📷 Isabelle Arthuis